


Solitary

by Quakey (Quak3y)



Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Canon character sort-of-death, Other, Spoilers, Venom (2018) #7 spoilers, Wednesday Spoilers, Wednesday rage, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, i'm not crying you're crying, mangling English grammar and punctuation on purpose, oblique reference to sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 20:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16271711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quak3y/pseuds/Quakey
Summary: “Come on,” Eddie says as gently as he knows how.  “Just say it.  We’ve all got problems here.  We’re all afraid.”Fear.  He’s been afraid.  That his other was going insane.  That they couldn’t be trusted.  The one being in the world, in the whole universe, that he loved the most, and they had been slowly going mad in his head.





	Solitary

**Author's Note:**

> I’m trying to do some disadvantaged group and POC representation, and I’m sure I’m messing it up, so apologies. At least I’m trying.
> 
> Written after reading up through Venom (vol. 4 / 2018) #7, so yeah, angst.

Each group is clustered together on one side of the empty room with an irregular empty space left between them, like a gulf, like the Marianas Trench, and Eddie knows he needs to find a way to fix it. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, looking first at the left side of the room to members of the homeless encampment, then to the right at the neighborhood residents.

One side is trying to look their best, clean and presentable in the face of adversity, even if they had to bathe with a washcloth and a pan of water warmed over a camp stove. The same for the other side, honestly, men and women standing straighter and taller in pride as they glare hostilely. The homeless are a mix of ages and races, almost homogeneous in their very heterogeneity. The neighborhood residents are the opposite: united in their dark skin and mostly by their youth, hardly a person over fifty.

“Come on, people,” Eddie says, gesturing for them to come closer to him in the center of the room, the abandoned, large space he’d found for this meeting. “Let’s talk.”

There are long moments before a few people from each side step forward. A young man, bearded and thin wearing hiking boots and a flannel shirt. A middle-aged man in worn clothes who looks more like a middle manager, a little girth around his waist and face and elsewhere. An older woman with gray in her dark, curly hair and a no-nonsense stride. A hugely tall young man with biceps that put Eddie’s own substantial ones to shame.

“So,” the latter says, guardedly, “what’re we talkin’ about?”

Eddie smiles, dark and amused and a little pleased.

“Everything. Until we find a solution.”

_Talking. He wishes they’d done that more. Him. His symbiote, his other. He’d thought that since they shared a body, touched minds as frequently as most people spoke, that there was nothing he needed to ask. Nothing he needed to say. He’d been wrong._

_There was so much he hadn’t realized was left unsaid. So much he hadn’t thought to ask. So much the other had been afraid to share. So much they should have shared. Until it was too late to share anything._

They talk. Or more like, they fling information and accusations across the divide between them. Eddie watches for a bit, watches everyone on the periphery shaking their heads or nodding or just watching, but staying quiet, until he tires of this going nowhere.

“Seems to me,” he says, interrupting the older woman who is in the middle of a long diatribe about cops getting attracted to the neighborhood because of the homeless encampment, “that you have an awful lot in common.”

She blinks at him, then glares, hands on her hips. “And what exactly would that be, boy?”

Eddie gestures to the rest of the people huddled back from the center. “Let’s find out.

“You,” he points to a woman standing with two older children on the homeless side. “What are you afraid of?”

She pales, then stammers, “I, uh, I’m, um, afraid that CPS is going to notice us. Decide a tent isn’t good enough. Take, um, take my kids.” The children shuffle closer to her and she slips his arms around their shoulders.

“And you?” He points at the the other side, a young woman he happens to know has a little girl that she’s left with her mother a few blocks from here.

She looks at him for long moments. Then says, quietly, “The same. That someone at school is going to decide I shouldn’t be allowed to have her.”

“You.” Finger jabbed toward the circle again.

“Um. Oh. That I’m… I really don’t know if…” the man stalls out in mid sentence, eyes darting around fearfully.

“Come on,” Eddie says as gently as he knows how. “Just say it. We’ve all got problems here. We’re all afraid.”

_Fear. He’s been afraid. That his other was going insane. That they couldn’t be trusted. The one being in the world, in the whole universe, that he loved the most, and they had been slowly going mad in his head. Even when they were better for a while, they were still not quite right. He had feared losing them. Feared they would leave. Feared what might happen. It’s darkly funny that he hadn’t even been afraid of the right things. He hadn’t tried to understand. Hadn’t asked what was wrong. Hadn’t listened. He’d let the fear stop him from opening his thoughts and his heart._

_And his other had done the same. Been stopped by fears of what Eddie would think of their past, their demons, their dreams. Their child._

_Fear had divided them. If they’d just talked, maybe it could have brought them together instead._

“I’m … afraid.” The man’s eyes flick here and there, never settling on any one face. “That I’ll OD under a bridge, in an alley somewhere. I’ll be just another body the cops find, have to tell my family.”

“You.” A middle-aged woman, eyes widening.

“That I’ll get a call,” she says softly. “That one of my sons is shot dead somewhere. By a cop. Or a gang.”

He keeps pointing, keeps asking. That we won’t have enough food to eat by the end of the month. That they don’t have enough food now. That we’ll freeze to death outdoors next month or the next when winter arrives. That they won’t have money and the heat will get turned off in the apartment. That they won’t find a job. That they’ll get fired. That their kids will get kicked out of school. That their kids won’t be able to go to school. The city will close the camp. The city will condemn their building. That they’ll be arrested for living. That they’ll be arrested for just being who they are.

Finally they’ve all spoke and he stops. Lets the silence sink in, lets the words fall silently into the gulf between them, settling into something like a bridge. Watches them glancing at the people to their left and right, but also across that divide, eyes meeting those of the person who’d also expressed a fear they shared. Saw understanding.

_They’d understood each other on a fundamental level. The fear of being alone. The initial thirst for vengeance. Then the desire to be something better. Outcast alone. Stronger together. Better together. Battling together. A hero together. Until everything else melted away and there was simply Together._

“Come on.” He gestures. Urges the sides to step closer. “Let’s figure this out. How can you fix this? How can you help each other?”

And they come together. Slowly. Tentatively. Stepping forward with ideas. Offers. Places and ways that two groups with so little are still offering to help each other.

_So many times he and the other had had nothing to give each other except themselves. On the run, he’s rarely had more than a crappy, temporary bolthole of an apartment. The other … well, symbiotes don’t really own anything except their host. Even if his had developed a strong love for his TV._

He smiles sadly.

_Together they had so many ways of helping._

_Strengthening. Blackness flowing over him, making him stronger, faster, bulletproof. Making him damn near invincible._

_Mending. Blocking his pain, closing his wounds. Holding him together, stitching him back into a whole._

_Tending. Finding medicine for the symbiote, extorting and threatening and compromising to get it when he had to. Finding the food his other craved and needed, often expensive things that left only enough money for spaghetti and cheap ramen for himself, and he didn’t begrudge the expense in the slightest, as long as his other’s mind was as clear as it could be._

_Protecting. Both of them trying to keep hurt to each other at bay. Even if they were mistaken about how they went about it, they had tried._

_Guarding. Stopping them from killing when their thoughts grew muddled with sickness. Keeping harm from them, from the baby, as long as he could._

_Loving. Cradling them, whispering to them. Sharing hopes, dreams, in pictures and words and feelings in their shared mindspace. Lying wrapped in them, feeling the other stroke across his skin, running fingers across and through their body in return. Pleasure blooming and exploding and reflected until they weren’t sure where one of them ended and the other started. Whispered words: love, Eddie, darling, my, mine, **we**._

Brock slowly wanders his way out of the center of the group. He doesn’t need to be here anymore. The leaders have his current burner phone number. They can contact him if they need his help, either as Eddie Brock or Venom.

He looks back to the very far side of the room and smiles wistfully. A couple has drifted quietly together. Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo is a young, african american man and Juliet is a young, homeless, asian woman. And if Romeo and Juliet had quietly gone to their neighborhood monstrous hero instead of a priest for help, when they wanted this meeting organized. Wanted peace and solutions. Their hands are firmly clasped as they watch the rest talk. Looking like they were wondering how else they can contribute.

But they’re already the solution, or at least they represent it. From two, they are now one, together.

_The feeling when he and his other were truly joined. A single body, a single mind, no he and them, only **we** , whether in joy or in battle._

Eddie has to tip his head back, squeeze his eyes closed, take a deep breath to retain control. Even so, tears prickle at the corners of his eyes.

 _ **We are Venom.** Or ... they had been Venom._

_One, together._

_Now **he** is Venom. Only he, alone in his mind._

He commands, like willing your fist to clench and it does, and the other’s body slithers from his pores, from his nose and mouth, covering him. Silent and obedient, no more than an extension of himself, controlled entirely by his will. He shifts it to camouflage, fading from sight as he walks out of the room.

Invisible, he strokes one hand gently over his arm, careful with his claws. Feels no answering ripple in return, and once again there is sorrow, unexpected and immediate and inescapable. So much sorrow it threatens to drown him, fill his lungs like the other until he can barely breathe through it.

“Thank you. I love you. I’ll keep you safe, darling,” he whispers hoarsely. _Until you get better,_ is unsaid, false hope that he dares not count on.

Nothing whispers back.

One, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, I've been reading too many Venom comics. And I want to simultaneously hug Marvel for giving me this couple and slap them upside their fool heads for the angst they are heaping on them.
> 
> Comics. What a dumpster fire, am I right?
> 
> I'm [withoutaconscienceorafilter](http://withoutaconscienceorafilter.tumblr.com/) (fandom) and [quakeyfic](http://quakeyfic.tumblr.com/) (writing crap and fic) on Tumblr, if you're into that sort of thing.


End file.
